grass, and straggling alders and birches, still known by the name of “The Bog’s Nook,” or corner. [34a] On this ground the common green plover—Vanellus cristatus—then commonly called the “Pyewipe,” [34b] bred in large numbers; the eggs were, as they are still, regarded as a delicacy, and old “Tabshag” used to make a considerable sum of money every year by sending hampers of these eggs by coach up to London for sale. So familiar he was said to be with the habits of the bird that he could tell by its cry how many eggs were in the nest. [34c] This land is now under cultivation, and the plaintive cry of the plover is heard no more, or only seldom. The plover, indeed, is still with us, but in numbers lessening every year. There are probably not now as many plovers’ nests in the whole parish as there formerly were in a single ploughed field. The writer, as a boy, was somewhat of an expert in finding these nests. He has watched the birds making them, which they do by turning round and round, with the breast or belly on the ground, thus forming a saucer-shaped hollow, in which they sometimes place two or three fibres of twitch as a lining. One bird makes three or four of such nests, and finally selects the one which, presumably, she deems most unnoticeable.
Sixty years ago black game were found on the moorland called now “The Ostler Plantations,” [34d] but though one still heard of them “in the forties,” they were then either extinct or a rapidly vanishing quantity. At the same time also the “boom” of the bittern might still be heard in the marshy parts of the same ground, but they are also now among the has been’s.
No more shall bittern boom,
No more shall blackcock crow:
For both have met their doom,
The sport of human foe.
From the character of the Ostler ground, formerly a very secluded tract of mixed wood, moor, and morass, it has been frequented by a great variety of birds. [35] The heron bred there within the last twenty years, a solitary nest remaining in a clump of trees in the south-west corner next to Tattershall, until it was blown down by a gale, and, the particular tree being shortly afterwards felled, the bird never returned. Drainage and the destruction of trees by the woodman’s axe, or by accidental fires, have so dried the ground as to reduce greatly the numbers of certain birds of aquatic or semi-aquatic habits. The coot “clanking” in the sedgy pools is no more heard. The moor-hen with those little, black, fluffy balls which formed her brood scuttling over the water to hide in the reeds, is rarely seen. The wild duck has, indeed, in one or two instances nested near a still-surviving pool within the last ten years; a nest was once found by the writer among the branches of a pollard willow, overhanging a pool, some five or six feet from the ground. He has also shot teal on odd occasions lying in the open; but both these birds are now rarely seen, and the same may be said of the snipe, “jack” and “full.” The latter were once plentiful, so that it was a common occurrence to put up a “whisp” of them, whereas now one seldom sees more than three or four in a whole season. A delicate little bird, very palatable on the table, was the waterrail, now almost extinct. The writer used to have permission to shoot along the “ballast ponds” beside the railway, and he has frequently shot them there. The woodcock is still with us. The poet painter, Dante Rosetti, kept one as a favourite pet; we of
Woodhall are more prosaic, and like to see the bird rise out of the bracken before us, and fall to our shot, eventually to appear nicely cooked on a toast before us at table. But of late years drainage has reduced their numbers. Although we could, of course, never at Woodhall, compete with the shooter on the Irish bogs, where as many as 100 or 200 are sometimes shot in a day; yet I could at one time almost always get a brace when I wanted them by trying certain spots which were their regular resort, and among my notes I find this: “Nov. 16, 1872, shot Bracken wood, got five woodcock, making 20 in three days.” [N.B.—Bracken wood, as the visitor may not know, is within one field of the Bath-house at Woodhall Spa.] Some years ago certain sportsmen (?) in this neighbourhood used to go to the sea coast every year, in October, at the time of the arrival of the first flight of woodcock (the second flight is in November), and shot them in considerable numbers, when they were resting, exhausted by their flight; hardly a creditable practice, and unworthy of a true lover of nature. A wood in Kirkstead, named “Bird-Hag Wood,” was formerly a favourite haunt of the woodcock, and I have shot many in it; but it was cleared away in the seventies. [36a] Woodcock occasionally breed on the moor, and a nest was found some years ago within 80 yards of the road to Horncastle, opposite the Tower on the Moor. Among my notes I find this: “Dec. 5, 1872, we saw about a dozen woodcock in Bird-Hag Wood, but only three were shot.”
I have just mentioned Bird-Hag and its woodcock. Pleasant memories of that wood have lingered with more than one sportsman. A former poetic owner of Kirkstead has written of it thus [36b]:—
Remote Bird-Hag, that favourite preserve,
To crown some chosen day, the choice reserve
Where noble oaks their autumn tints display,
And fern gigantic checks the sportsman’s way
But well is toil and trouble there repaid,
By the wild tenants of that oaken shade,
While rabbits, hares, successive, cross your road,
And scarcely give the time to fire and load,—
While shots resound, and pheasants loudly crow,
Who heeds the bramble? Who fatigue can know?
Here from the brake, that bird of stealthy flight,
The mottled woodcock glads our eager sight,
Great is his triumph, whose lucky shot shall kill
The dark-eyed stranger of the lengthy bill
Unlike the pheasant, who himself betrays,
And dearly for his daring challenge pays.
Small notice gives the woodcock of his flight;
Not seen at once, at once he’s lost to sight.
Yet short his flight, and should you mark him down,
The chances are that woodcock is your own;
But quick the hand, and no less quick the eye,
Would stop him as he hurries by;
Few are the birds, whate’er may be their sort,
More try the skill, give more exciting sport.
A few words may be said on the pheasants and partridges; and first of the former. The breed on the Ostler ground have a history. The late Sir Henry Dymoke, of Scrivelsby Court, used to rear, in large numbers, a white breed of pheasant, and as, with the exception of the Ostler ground, he, with his brother, had almost the whole of the shooting, extending from Scrivelsby to the Witham, they spread over that ground, and sought a kind of asylum in the dense cover of the Ostler plantations. Further, the writer’s father-in-law imported an Indian breed, called the “Kalege” pheasant, a very handsome bird; and these two strains have affected the breed on that ground, and, doubtless, have also had their effect on pheasants in the neighbourhood generally. White broods of pheasants are from time to time hatched on the ground; also piebald varieties are not uncommon. In the year 1898, a cream-coloured specimen was shot. Some of the cocks have at times a decided fringe of blue or purple in their plumages from the Kalege mixture.
As to partridges: It is only in recent years that the French, or red-legged breed (Cannabis rufa) have established themselves here. In the sixties, though said to have been introduced into England by Charles II., they were almost, if not entirely, unknown here. The writer shot them in Cambridgeshire in the fifties; and from the south-eastern coast and counties they have persistently spread, until now we have them everywhere. In the first instance, probably, they were brought across “the silver streak” by a gale, like the sand grouse, of which we have read, on the coast of Yorkshire. But whereas
the sand grouse were immediately shot as curiosities, the red-leg, being a bird (as every shooter knows) given to running, knew how to take care of himself, and, like many another unwelcome intruder, he came to stay. The flesh is decidedly inferior in flavour to that of the common English brown partridge. I well remember a practical joke being played on a Woodhall keeper. The “Frenchmen,” as they were called, had only just arrived. A party of us were out shooting, and a red-leg was shot. The keeper, seeing the new and handsome-looking bird, was very proud of it, and though he had never yet tasted one, he loudly proclaimed, in his ignorance, that it would be as good in the eating as fine in the plumage. A day or two after we were out shooting again. Luncheon time came, and we lay stretched on the sward under a spreading tree, on a hot day in September, where the ladies joined us, bringing the refreshment. Cold partridges were among the fare, and instructions had been given beforehand that the “Frenchman” should be specially reserved, to hand to the keeper. In due course the Captain passed on to the keeper—as being specially favoured “above his fellows,” by the attention—half of a partridge. Nothing was said, and we all busied ourselves with the viands before us, but the keeper was under our careful observation. Presently his features were seen to be considerably distorted by wry faces, as he turned the leg or the wing about in his hands, while picking them, with some difficulty, to the bone. Probably the bird was not only a “Frenchman,” but a tough old cock into the bargain. At length he could stand it no longer, and, looking round at us, he said, “Dal it! Captain, but this bird’s a rum ’un.” “Don’t you like it?” was the reply; “why, it’s the handsome Frenchman you admired so much, when it was shot the other day.” “Well, then,” said the keeper, “I wish all such Frenchmen were at the battle of Water-gruel. I’ll back the English.” [38]